Interesting article in yesterday's London Evening Standard about Andy's plans for the rest of this year which involve a reduction in the punishing schedule he set himself last year & which ultimately resulted in conspicuous failure, thanks to assorted late "freak" injuries.

So, as a way of shortening the playing year to try and reduce burnout and injuries to the top players, the ATP ask the top players to play the Paris Masters and very important WTF ( as the ATP hype themselves ) in successive weeks.

Surely having a week between the Paris Masters and the WTF and the Davis Cup Final then following on a week later was a less bad optiion.  Yes, it is theoretically good in itself for the players involved in the Davis Cup Final to have an extra week's close season ( but for some to have it possibly f0llow successive Paris Masters and WTF ?! ).  Re all the non Davis Cup players it makes no sense to me that an extra week's close season is better than a gap between these two tournaments. 

Have the top players really gone along with this ?  And if so, is it because they have not much intention of giving their best ( or even appearing ) in the Paris Masters ?  Whatever, the Paris Masters and WTF are likely to be adversely effected quality wise, so the folk that are really disadvantaged are particularly the paying spectators and also anyone who likes watching top quality tennis, but **** them.

Be very interesting to see how this unfolds this year, but from the moment this back to back schedule was decided on for this year and theoretically coming years, I just thought it to be, as RJA said,"insane".